Use of Chatbots at the Intersection of Technology and Education: A Comprehensive Review

Introduction

The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity and chatbots exist because of that search for ‘simplicity’ in human-machine conversation. Chatbots started their journey in 1960 when man-machine interaction programs became processed while converting the text to speech software for understanding the needs and intents of users over the network. Advancement of natural language processing improved the use and performance of chatbots. Later came the year 2000 when dialogue-based processing played a major role with the involvement of sophisticated artificial intelligence over a mature database and applying rules over it.

Early attempts at AI in education emerged with computer-based learning programs. ELIZA, a natural language processing program, was one of the first chatbots designed by Joseph Weizenbaum in the 1960s. Although not specifically for education, it laid the groundwork for conversational AI. The developmental phase started in 1980 and involved more machine learning. Educational software, often featuring basic chat functionalities, started to gain traction. However, these programs were rudimentary compared to today's AI-driven chatbots. Moving further, the phase of AI came and technological advancements leveraged this growth, especially in natural language processing and machine learning, leading to more sophisticated chatbots. These were incorporated into educational platforms to enhance learning experiences.

As per the survey report of Opus Research (Opus Research Report, 2019) in the year 2019, it was observed that more and more companies intend to use chatbots to understand the needs and intents of their customers for certain reasons. A conclusive study of ‘Grand View Research company reports that the annual compound growth rate is 24.83 annually as of the year 2022 (Chatbot Market Report 2023). Chatbots benefit companies in many ways i.e., automated communication, expertized customer response, instant response, and categorized approach for each query and for each customer which ultimately helps to improve the financial performance of the company.

Figure 1.

Different aspects of a chatbot

In the educational field, ELIZA (Shum et al., 2018) came from the house of MIT USA, in 1966, and was the first chatbot that helped many academicians understand the use of chatbots in teaching and research. It encouraged researchers working in Psychology to use the chatbot and influence people's lives with its proper implementation. Teachers and researchers working in universities in many parts of the world to understand the psychological needs of the users, moving further IBM Watson was the successor of this same concept (Zhou et al., 2018).